Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Thursday 5 November that he is commuting all of California’s death sentences — 548 people — to life in prison without the possibility of parole, in what the Death Penalty Information Center called the largest mass clemency in United States history. The move would effectively empty the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere, a row that has not seen an execution in 20 years, and it comes in the final months of Newsom’s second and final term as governor, two days after the midterm elections and as speculation about his ambitions for the 2028 presidential race intensifies.
Newsom set out his reasoning in a three-page open letter addressed to “all Californians”, writing: “I take this action because I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes each of us.” The letter frames the commutations as a matter of principle rather than of individual cases: no single prisoner’s circumstances are singled out, and the decision applies to every person on the row, from the most notorious to the least known. Of the 548 people, 529 are men and 19 are women, according to the governor’s office.
The announcement is the most sweeping use of the clemency power by any governor in American history, and it is also, for now, incomplete. About two-thirds of the commutations — 382 of the 548 — must be reviewed by the California Supreme Court before they become final, because the state constitution requires court review of clemency for anyone with multiple felony convictions. At least four of the court’s seven justices must recommend clemency before those commutations can take effect. Newsom can act on the remaining 166 cases without that additional approval, and he has asked the court to return its recommendations by the end of 2026 so he can complete the commutations before his term expires in January 2027.
The distinction matters, and it is the most important fact about the announcement. The commutations are not all final, and death row is not already empty. What Newsom has done is to set in motion the largest clemency in the country’s history, with the bulk of it dependent on a court process that is still to run its course. The death penalty itself has not been abolished in California: the action applies only to current death sentences, and a future governor could restore the practice. The row’s future, in other words, depends on the Supreme Court’s recommendations, on the calendar, and on the politics of the governorship after Newsom leaves office.
The largest mass clemency in US history
The scale of the announcement is what makes it historic. California has the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere, and the Death Penalty Information Center’s description of the move as the largest mass clemency in United States history reflects the sheer number of people involved: 548 sentences, commuted in a single action. No previous governor has used the clemency power on anything like this scale, and no previous mass commutation has touched so many people at once.
The size of the row is itself a product of California’s history with the death penalty. The state has not executed a prisoner for 20 years, and the row has grown over decades as courts imposed death sentences that were never carried out. Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions in March 2019, shortly after taking office, and ordered the execution chamber at San Quentin closed. The moratorium stopped executions; the commutations announced this week go further, converting the sentences themselves from death to life without parole.
The Death Penalty Information Center has also put the financial cost of the system in stark terms. The center noted that California has spent around $6 billion on death penalty cases since 1978 while only 13 people were executed in that period. Once the decision takes effect, the number of death-row inmates across the United States would fall by nearly 30 percent — a measure of just how large a share of the national death-row population California holds. Those figures come from the Death Penalty Information Center, and they are the figures the center uses to argue that the system has delivered almost nothing for an enormous expenditure.
The commutations would change the lives of 548 people in the most concrete way possible: from a sentence of death to a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. None of the 548 would be released. Life without parole means what it says — the remainder of their lives in prison, with no prospect of release. The distinction is important to the debate that has followed the announcement, in which supporters describe the move as a moral step and critics describe it as a denial of justice to victims. Both sides are, in a sense, describing the same outcome: 548 people who will die in prison, but not by execution.
California death row commutations: how 548 sentences change
The mechanics of the commutations are more complicated than the headline suggests, and the complication is written into the California Constitution. Of the 548 people whose sentences Newsom wants to commute, 382 have multiple felony convictions, which triggers a constitutional requirement that the California Supreme Court review the clemency before it can take effect. At least four of the court’s seven justices must recommend clemency in each of those cases. The remaining 166 cases do not require that additional approval, and Newsom can complete those commutations on his own authority.
The governor has asked the court to return its recommendations by the end of 2026, so that he can complete the commutations before his term expires in January 2027. That timetable is tight, and it is deliberate: Newsom’s term ends in January, and any commutations not completed by then would fall to his successor, whose views on the death penalty are not yet known. The request to the court is, in effect, a request to move quickly enough that the decision cannot be undone by the calendar.
The court’s role is not a formality. The requirement of a recommendation from at least four justices means that each of the 382 cases will be considered individually, and the court could in principle decline to recommend clemency in some of them. The process is designed to be a check on the governor’s power, and it is the reason the commutations cannot be described as complete until the court has acted. For the families of victims, and for the prosecutors who secured the original sentences, the court’s review is the remaining forum in which the decision can be challenged case by case.
It is also worth being precise about what the commutations do not do. They do not repeal California’s death penalty. They apply only to the people currently sentenced to death, and they do not prevent a future governor from allowing executions to resume, or future courts from imposing death sentences in new cases. The moratorium Newsom imposed in 2019 is an executive act, and the commutations are executive acts too. A future governor could take a different view, and the law that permits the death penalty in California remains on the books.
A moratorium, not an abolition
California’s relationship with the death penalty has been defined for two decades by the gap between the sentences its courts impose and the executions its government carries out. The state has not executed a prisoner for 20 years. In that time, death sentences have continued to be handed down, appeals have continued to wind their way through the courts, and the row has continued to grow — while the execution chamber at San Quentin, closed on Newsom’s orders in 2019, has sat unused.
Newsom’s moratorium, imposed in March 2019 shortly after he took office, was the first step. It halted executions but left the sentences in place, and it left the machinery of the death penalty — the appeals, the legal challenges, the costs — running. The commutations announced this week are the second step, and they are the decisive one for the people on the row: they replace the sentence itself, rather than merely suspending its execution.
The history helps explain why the announcement has been framed by its supporters as the end of an era and by its critics as an overreach. Supporters point to the 20 years without an execution and the $6 billion spent since 1978 for 13 executions, and argue that the system has long since ceased to function as a system of punishment. Critics point to the sentences themselves — imposed by juries, affirmed on appeal — and argue that a governor should not be able to set aside the judgments of the courts on such a scale, in the final weeks of his term, without the consent of the victims’ families.
Reaction from prosecutors and victims’ families
The sharpest reaction to the announcement came from the prosecutors and law enforcement officials in the counties where many of the 548 were convicted. Riverside County’s sheriff, Chad Bianco, and District Attorney Mike Hestrin harshly criticised the decision. Hestrin said Newsom did not notify district attorneys or seek input from victims’ families before acting, and he noted that 87 of the 548 people whose sentences were commuted were convicted in Riverside County — the largest single share from any county.
The criticism from Riverside County captures the core objection from prosecutors: that the decision was made without consultation, and that it overrides the work of the juries and the courts that imposed the sentences. For a district attorney, a death sentence is the outcome of a prosecution that may have taken years, and the commutation of that sentence by executive action can feel like a dismissal of the entire process. Hestrin’s complaint about the lack of notification is, in that light, not a procedural quibble but a statement about respect — for the prosecutors, for the courts and for the families.
Victims’ advocates have said they will challenge the decision in court, and their challenge is likely to focus on the cases that require Supreme Court review. The 382 cases that need the court’s recommendation are the natural forum for that challenge, and the advocates’ argument will be that the court should not recommend clemency in cases where the underlying crimes were, in their telling, among the worst the state has seen. The phrase “the worst of the worst” has already been used by critics to describe the people on the row, and it is a phrase that will recur in the debate.
The families themselves are at the centre of the argument, and their voices are the ones that cut most sharply against the governor’s framing. Newsom’s letter speaks of California’s values and of the foundations of the legal system. For the families of murder victims, the values at stake are different: the promise that the sentence imposed for the murder of their loved one would be carried out. The commutations do not release anyone, and the governor’s supporters will argue that life without parole is itself a severe punishment. But for families who were told that justice meant a death sentence, the conversion of that sentence to life imprisonment is, by definition, a lesser outcome than the one they were promised.
The political response has followed the familiar lines of the death penalty debate, but with an intensity that reflects the scale of the decision. Supporters of the commutations, including abolitionist groups and many Democrats, have welcomed the move as a long-overdue recognition that the system is broken. Critics, including Republican officials and victims’ advocates, have described it as an abuse of the clemency power and a betrayal of victims. The debate will continue in the courts, in the legislature and in the campaign for the presidency, where Newsom’s decision will be cited by supporters and opponents alike.
The cost argument and the national picture
The Death Penalty Information Center’s figures — around $6 billion spent on death penalty cases in California since 1978, with only 13 executions in that period — are the most frequently cited numbers in the debate, and they frame the argument for the commutations in economic as well as moral terms. The centre’s point is that the system has consumed enormous resources while delivering almost nothing in the way of executions, and that those resources could have been spent elsewhere: on solving crimes, on supporting victims, on the ordinary work of the criminal justice system.
The national context sharpens the point. Once the decision takes effect, the number of death-row inmates across the United States would fall by nearly 30 percent, according to the centre. That is a measure of California’s outsized share of the national death-row population, and it is a measure of how much of the American death penalty, as a practical matter, has been a Californian phenomenon — a large number of sentences, very few executions, and a system that has functioned, for two decades, as a sentence of life imprisonment with a death warrant attached.
What happens next
The immediate timetable is set by the governor’s request to the California Supreme Court. Newsom has asked the court to return its recommendations on the 382 cases by the end of 2026, so that he can complete the commutations before his term expires in January 2027.
The court’s review will be the decisive event of the next two months. At least four of the seven justices must recommend clemency in each of the 382 cases, and the court’s handling of that volume of cases in such a short time will itself be a test of the institution. The justices will be asked to consider, case by case, whether clemency is appropriate — and their recommendations will determine whether the largest mass clemency in American history is completed in full, or whether some of the 548 remain under sentence of death.
Beyond the court, the political consequences will play out over a longer horizon. Newsom is expected to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, and the commutations will be one of the defining decisions of his governorship — cited by supporters as evidence of moral leadership and by critics as evidence of a governor out of step with the voters. The death penalty remains a divisive issue nationally, and a candidate who has commuted 548 death sentences will be asked about it at every turn.
For the 548 people on California’s death row, the announcement changes everything and nothing at once. Their sentences have been commuted, in the governor’s words, to life without parole — but for 382 of them, that commutation is not yet final, and will not be until the Supreme Court has spoken. They will remain in prison either way. The difference is whether they will die there by execution, or by the ordinary passage of time. That difference, for the governor and for the state, is the whole point of the decision.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from USA Today, Al Jazeera and The Desert Sun.